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Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Tourist New York Experience

A small group of us Texans got together for dinner recently with a mutual friend who now lives in New York City, and was back in Dallas for the Christmas holidays.

Whenever my friend and I get together, we always compare notes about our Big Apple experiences, with hers being so much fresher than mine, yet remarkably, not as different as one might imagine. As they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same, and New York City is one of those places where that saying never fails to prove true.

It was expensive when I lived there, and it's even more expensive now. The diverse personalities it attracted then are still attracted there today. People in old apartments still have to run their window-unit air conditioners in the winter to combat the sweltering steam heat being pumped through radiators from basement boilers that only know two settings: on and off. If you open your windows - even a crack - too much soot from the city's dirty air comes inside your apartment.

There are always interesting stories from the subway to tell. Always new adventures to relate. And always, the same old complaints, about the price of movies and shampoo and tolls, slothful unionized workers, and tourists.

You know you've become a legitimate New Yorker when you start complaining about the tourists!

These Little Town Blues

Ahh, yes, those wonderful sidewalk-clogging, subway-bumbling, map-toting, photo-taking, suburbanites and internationals who figure the $300 they spend per night in the city's overpriced hotels entitles them to treat Gotham's residents like bit players in a real-world urban theme park.

Nearly 53 million tourists visited New York City in 2012, spending nearly $37 billion during their stay, which funded over 300,000 jobs for New Yorkers. The City of New York estimates that tourism spared each of the municipality's households $1,575 in taxes. Among international travelers, New York is the fifth-most-popular urban destination. By comparison, sun-soaked Los Angeles is merely 20th.

With all that's at stake from its tourism industry, business-savvy New Yorkers know they can't begrudge their guests the opportunity to see what makes their home such a desirable place to visit - even if living there is somewhat less desirable, partly because of all those tourists! But then again, the incessant irony that can be found in almost every nook and cranny of Gotham is part of its charm. New Yorkers would love to live without tourists, but as frightfully expensive as the place is already, living without tourists would make it even more expensive.

Crime and Punishment

When I lived there, back in the early 1990's, crime was at all-time highs, and tourism, while a large component of the city's economy, wasn't nearly as prominent as it is today. Yet even then, city residents grumbled about all of the sightseers.

After a family from the deep South had shopped in Trump Tower, they were jumped by muggers right outside the glitzy shopping center's doors on Fifth Avenue, and the father was stabbed to death when he didn't produce his wallet fast enough. Apparently, the family, flush with both cash and excitement over their visit to the big city, had gone through the shops in Trump Tower, flashing their money and blathering in their Southern accents, which caught the attention of some crooks looking for easy prey.

When news broke throughout the city of the murder, in broad daylight, on one of Manhattan's most famous and congested thoroughfares, I was appalled. But native New Yorkers scoffed.

"Serves them right, showing cash in public."

"That's what country hicks get when they don't know how to behave in New Yawk."

"What idiot shops in a place like Trump Tower and acts like it's their first time to spend money?"

I quickly learned that tourists won't get any sympathy from New Yorkers if they don't follow some basic survival tips.

Today, the city enjoys a far lower crime rate than when I lived there, and of course, that's a good thing. However, just because the place is a lot safer now, should that translate into apathy when it comes to protecting yourself from even petty crime? No, you probably won't get murdered, or even shot, during your stay, but just because its crime rate is low doesn't mean there is no crime. After all, no matter where you live, crime rates are all relative, until you become a victim. And there are still plenty of crime victims in New York City.

For example, in 2013, the city experienced over 20,000 felony assaults. There were nearly 45,000 cases of grand larceny, which in New York State, means theft of property valued at $1,000 or more. Petty larceny? Try 85,000 cases of it. So... how much is the watch you're wearing? That leather overcoat you're planning on taking with you? Out of 53 million tourists plus 8 million residents, these crime numbers may not sound like much, but hey - if you can follow some easy suggestions to avoid becoming a statistic, why not?

Therefore: Men, simply keep your wallet in a front pocket at all times. Ladies, wear an
over-the-shoulder purse across your chest. See? It's not that hard.

Wherefore: New Yorkers who display their personal electronics in public do so
either with the benefit of sufficient wealth (to replace them after they're stolen), or with an insufficient amount of wisdom. Or both. And the same follows for tourists. If you're going to be stubborn and brandish a smartphone in public, make sure you have an exceptionally firm grip on it. Forty percent of all robberies in New York City involve smartphones.

Be wise about your
surroundings at all times. However, you'll drive yourself silly if you racially-profile, since native New Yorkers of all colors and cultures will likely walk, dress, talk, and otherwise express themselves in manners that you're not used to. Remember, New York doesn't exist for you, and neither do New Yorkers. They're not going to change their attitudes to accommodate you. The reason you're being tolerated is because of the money you contribute to the city's coffers. Just make sure the money you're contributing is through your hotel tax (by the way, it's best not to look at your bill when you check out) and not a tourist-target mugging.

If you think you're lost, or need to catch
your breath, one trick I learned when I lived there is to stand facing plate
glass windows to evaluate the "lay of the land" in reflections on the
windows. By doing so, you'll look more like a shopper than a confused
tourist, and you'll reduce your tourist-target quotient.

Don't Be a Typical Tourist

And speaking of confused tourists, if you try my little window trick, please do so while standing at the edge of the sidewalk, not in the middle of it, where New Yorkers are hurriedly walking in their attempt to get someplace fast. One of the surest ways to become the object of scorn by New Yorkers is to become an impediment to traffic, whether pedestrian, or motorized vehicle, or even bicycle. You'll see lots of green paint on the pavement now, but that green paint denotes a bike lane, not a stand-and-chat-while-checking-directions-on-my-smartphone zone.

If you want to take a photo, step to the side and away from both pedestrian and vehicular traffic. Don't spend lots of time taking your photos; with digital cameras, you can take several snaps in a row and hopefully, later on, you can check to see that you got at least one good shot.

If you're part of a group of three or more people, don't walk more than two abreast.

Only the rudest New Yorkers stand right in front of subway car or elevator car doors, waiting for them to open. When waiting for a subway, bus, or elevator, step to the side when doors open. Let off-loading passengers disembark first, and then board quickly yourself. If you're boarding a subway car, make sure you've already determined you've identified the right subway line/train beforehand; don't block doorways as you contemplate making a last-minute change.

My view from a Port Authority helicopter
flying over Park Avenue in the early 1990's.
A lot of those shorter buildings in the center of this photo
have been replaced by glassy high-rises.

Hey - there's a lot to explore and experience in the Big Apple, and the best way to enjoy your visit is to be safe and smart about it.

Remember, too, that even though you're probably mostly interested in Manhattan, that fabled island is only one of New York City's five incredible
boroughs. So, if you're an adventurous sort, consider exploring hot spots
outside of Manhattan Island's more famous tourist destinations, like the
world-renowned Bronx Zoo, the pseudo-Tudor
splendor of Forest Hills Gardens in Queens, and surprisingly elegant Brownstone Brooklyn.

And speaking of what to see and do, I would be remiss if I didn't give you a brief listing of where to go - and where to avoid - during your stay in the world's greatest city. Now, as a rule, I don't really recommend restaurants, since tastes - and budgets! - in dining
vary so much, but I do bend that rule with a couple of key exceptions.

Guggenheim Museum, on the Upper East
Side, not so much for the art (see my opinion of MoMA below), but the
building itself, where you take the elevator to the top and walk down the
ramp; the Guggenheim represents the only work of Frank Lloyd Wright's ever
constructed in New York City

Trinity Church, at the head
of Wall Street; would that our nation's financiers acknowledge the
symbolism; Alexander Hamilton is among the notables buried in its adjacent
graveyard

St. Paul's Chapel, opened in 1766, the oldest continuously-used public building
in Manhattan (there are older buildings throughout the boroughs, however;
for example, a Quaker meeting house in Flushing, Queens, was built in 1694)

Battery Park City, with its refreshing esplanade along the Hudson River, although
it's the most non-New York neighborhood on Manhattan Island

Bowling Green,
the first municipal park in the United States, home to the famous Wall
Street charging bull, and across the street from the Rockefeller family's former Standard Oil headquarters, the former US headquarters for the venerable Cunard Line, and the historic US Custom House (now housing
the National Museum of the American Indian), a Beaux-Arts jewel of a
building

Tourist Traps in New York City:

30 Rockefeller Plaza, unless
you like being completely surrounded by similarly-duped tourists

Empire State Building, unless
you like waiting hours in close quarters and still not get to the very top

Lincoln Center, one of
urbanism's best lessons about bad 1960's design, proving that even the
world's best orchestra and opera, plus continuous - and costly-
architectural tweaking, can only salvage adequacy

Cathedral of St. John the
Divine (in the winter, or on a cloudy day), when its shadowy interior and bleak, incomplete exterior can recall the foreboding chill of religious cynics

Harlem, where nouveau
riche blacks have reclaimed beautiful neighborhoods but in the process,
have made them as unlivable for middle-income minorities as
their crime-ridden shells were a generation ago

Strand Books, an
amazing Greenwich Village bookstore awash with the pungent smell of
really old paper, but so crowded with grunge hipsters it's not a conducive
environment for browsing... it's also not a place most registered
Republicans would feel welcome

Bloomingdales, which
although being a Manhattan retailing institution, seems to have lost some
of its glamorous mojo

Zabar's, probably the
world's original gourmet foodie emporium, whose business model has now
been replicated so much, you'll likely miss how legendary the store has
been to at least two generations of Upper West Siders

Washington Square Park,
and its iconic archway, in the heart of Greenwich Village and the campus
of New York University, boasting an exquisite old-time city neighborhood
that's home to some of the City's most bacchanalian college students and
artists